First It Was Fat, Then It Was Salt...Is Sugar Next?

With the first inklings that everything "low fat" might not be such a good dietary habit, I wondered when someone would come up with a study that questioned the wisdom of "low salt" dietary habits. Well, we're there:

Low-Salt Diets Shown to Pose Health Risks 
Findings Are Latest Challenge to Benefits of Aggressively Low Sodium Targets

Now, wouldn't it be the cat's meow if some researcher published a study showing that restricted sugar intake might be unhealthy as well? Alas, such a study, if published, would almost certainly be one more chunk of "junk science." Sugar - even to skeptics like me - does seem to pose serious health threats when taken in excess. As for fat and salt, though, if the drive to take these out of our diets isn't a clear and present danger to our health, at least we can say that the jury is out on whether we should worry about how much of these we eat, at least as a general rule.

But as for a lesson here, the whole low-fat-low-carbs-low-salt-low-this-low-that industry needs to be taken with, well, a grain of salt. Use your reason and common sense here and you can probably figure out what's good for you. For example, most of us know when something's excessively salty, don't we? Oh, right, packaged food products frequently have too much salt added, and so we've become inured to what, under natural conditions, might be a salty taste. But don't we all now know this? And if we do, being endowed with the gift of reason, and exercising just the tiniest grain of common sense, shouldn't we be avoiding - for the most part - such foods? Do we really need canned food, or any kind of prepared foods treated with all sorts of chemicals in addition to too much salt? 

If you simply cut down on such foods, you'll see exactly what I mean. Your taste buds will recover from being inured to salt (and sugar) and return to their natural state where you'll be able to taste when something's too salty. And, of course, you'll save money too by avoiding these expensive alternatives to truly good, healthy eating.

Just a suggestion.

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